Beef Taco Pie: Sweet, Savory, Delicious-Quick One Dish Dinner

Beef Taco Pie is seriously super yummy! The flavor isn’t exactly of tacos so it won’t mess up your Taco Tuesday but it’s fabulous all on it’s own!

Of course, any ground meat can be used if you aren’t a beef eater! It’s definitely worth adding into the mix to change things up some. We also have recipes for Taco Seasoning, Fish Tacos and Oklahoma Indian Tacos (the cheater edition) if you’re looking for some other ways to shake things up this week!

Chief Zoo Keeper isn’t a fan of having weekly anything, he likes things to be mixed up all the time so if I want a taco Tuesday to be well received, it must be untitled and not typical. Beef taco pie fits the bill perfectly! Plus, it’s super easy to make and tastes fabulous!

Not going to lie to ya, I also love that cleanup is so quick and easy. If you wanted, you could add a salad or mix in some more types of peppers. Poblanos would go great in this recipe.

How to Make Beef Taco Pie

Typically, I use a glass pie pan so those take a couple of extra tortillas. You may need to adjust the time for other types of pie pans.

Ingredients:

• 14.5 oz can petite diced tomatoes
• 6- 6″ flour tortillas
• 1 pound lean ground meat
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 red or green sweet pepper (see notes below!), chopped
• 1 tsp chili powder
• 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• Shredded Cheese (optional)
• Picante Sauce

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Brush bottom of pie pan with olive oil.
3. Spread large spoon of tomatoes on the bottom of pie pan.
4. Arrange four tortillas to cover the bottom and sides. For bigger pie pans, you may have to use an extra.
5. Cook beef (or whatever ground meat you choose) with onion and bell pepper. Then drain the grease.
6. Add chili powder and cinnamon to mixture and cook an additional minute, stirring.
7. Add in 1/2 of tomatoes (should be 1/2 cup), bring to a boil, reduce heat and cook for 2 minutes.
8. Cut the remaining tortillas into strips and set aside.
9. Spoon mixture over tortillas in the pie pan.
10. Top with tortilla strips. Cover with remaining tomatoes, picante sauce and cheese (to your liking)
11. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until cheese is melted and the tortillas sticking up on the side start to crisp on the edges.

Notes:

• You can use either green or red bell pepper, but it’s already sweet so red will make it even more so. We prefer the green.
• Due to lactose issues, we don’t use the cheese and it tastes fantastic. Another advantage is lower calories!

Sides, Drinks & Desserts:

I wrote above that it is a little sweet, so you may not want a dessert at all but since I’m a sweets junkie, I just had to share some suggestions!

Of course, Spanish rice is always a great sides but if you’re going low carb (or low calorie), a salad would be fantastic with this. For your salad you can mix things up by using avocados and top it with some picante sauce. (You can thank me later, haha)

As for drinks, we had Tropical Punch Kool-aid but if you want to go a little fancier, try making homemade Tamarin-do. It takes some work, but if you like it then it’s totally worth it!

For dessert, you could make a fabulous pan of brownies or you could use the extra time you aren’t going to spend cooking on making some traditional Peruvian cookies. I also feel like some vanilla ice cream and fried apples would be a great end to this yummy meal!